the links which
connect them. This work includes my travels in Palestine, Syria, Asia
Minor, Sicily and Spain, and will be followed by a third and concluding
volume, containing my adventures in India, China, the Loo-Choo Islands,
and Japan. Although many of the letters, contained in this volume,
describe beaten tracks of travel, I have always given my own individual
impressions, and may claim for them the merit of entire sincerity. The
journey from Aleppo to Constantinople, through the heart of Asia Minor,
illustrates regions rarely traversed by tourists, and will, no doubt, be
new to most of my readers. My aim, throughout the work, has been to give
correct pictures of Oriental life and scenery, leaving antiquarian
research and speculation to abler hands. The scholar, or the man of
science, may complain with reason that I have neglected valuable
opportunities for adding something to the stock of human knowledge: but if
a few of the many thousands, who can only travel by their firesides,
should find my pages answer the purpose of a series of cosmoramic
views--should in them behold with a clearer inward eye the hills of
Palestine, the sun-gilded minarets of Damascus, or the lonely pine-forests
of Phrygia--should feel, by turns, something of the inspiration and the
indolence of the Orient--I shall have achieved all I designed, and more
than I can justly hope.

New York, _October_, 1854.

Contents

Chapter I.

Life in a Syrian Quarantine.

Voyage from Alexandria to Beyrout--Landing at Quarantine--The
Guardians--Our Quarters--Our Companions--Famine and Feasting--The
Morning--The Holy Man of Timbuctoo--Sunday in Quarantine--Islamism--We
are Registered--Love through a Grating--Trumpets--The Mystery
Explained--Delights of Quarantine--Oriental _vs._ American
Exaggeration--A Discussion of Politics--Our
Release--Beyrout--Preparations for the Pilgrimage

Chapter II.

The Coast of Palestine.

The Pilgrimage Commences--The Muleteers--The Mules--The Donkey--Journey
to Sidon--The Foot of Lebanon--Pictures--The Ruins of Tyre--A Wild
Morning--The Tyrian Surges--Climbing the Ladder of Tyre--Panorama of the
Bay of Acre--The Plain of Esdraelon--Camp in a Garden--Acre--the Shore
of the Bay--Haifa--Mount Carmel and its Monastery--A Deserted Coast--The
Ruins of Caesarea--The Scenery of Palestine--We become Robbers--El
Haram--Wrecks--the Harbor and Town of Jaffa.

Chapter III.

From Jaffa